Upset Tuesday, and the lovely Colonial
My sister claimed I apologized too much in my boys' soccer blog posts, and since pretty much all of those apologies were for missing days, I'm not going to start that again this time. Y'all will just have to trust that I was just too busy with other girls' basketball-related stuff.
Anyway, Tuesday turned into Super Tuesday with the upsets, didn't it? I know that BE was without Lazos, but still, that margin to Pennsauken didn't make that much sense. Then the Indians go and validate that win by spanking Eastern last night and Cherokee takes out Cherry Hill East. Now there are zero undefeated teams left in the Olynpic American, East is 3-1, Washington Township is 2-1, and Pennsauken, Cherokee and Eastern are all 2-2. Call me crazy, but I think 7-3 is going to be enough to win that division, and I'd be more amused than shocked if 6-4 turned the trick.
The other race to destabilize on Tuesday was the ever-riveting Colonial. That group of teams may well not be as strong as they have been in the past -- certainly the late 1990s were a Colonial renaissance that may never occur again -- but the intensity never diminishes. Tom Mulligan, architect of the upset over Haddonfield that threw a spotlight on this chaos, made an apt comparison, I think, when he likened the Colonial to the Philadelphia Big Five in college basketball.
A little story: When I was at Temple, I covered what may have been John Chaney's most talented team, the 1999-2000 squad led by PG Pepe Sanchez, with Quincy Wadley at SG, Mark Karcher at SF, Lamont Barnes at PF, Kevin Lyde at center, and Lynn Greer coming off the bench as the sixth man. This is a team that was slaughtering opponents by 30 and making it look easy, holding them under 40 points most of the time. They went into top-ranked and undefeated Cincinnati, which featured future NBA lottery picks Kenyon Martin and DeMarr Johnson, and kicked the crap out of the Bearcats in February. So the tournament season is coming, the top teams are dropping like flies and it seems like the Owls are a shoe-in for a No. 1 seed as long as they hold serve. Well, the last game of the regular season was against St. Joe's at the Palestra, and the Hawks wouldn't get Jameer until the next season. They were a nice team, led by Marvin O'Connor, but they were an NIT team and Temple had Final Four expectations.
Didn't matter. Temple played as hard as I've seen them play, but there was just no way talent was going to decide that game. St. Joe won in overtime. The Owls went on to win the A-10 tournament, winning the final by like 35, but the NCAA Tournament committee -- much like the NJSIAA seeded process -- didn't believe in the magic of rivalry games. All they saw was St. Joe's middling RPI number, and that was enough to drop Temple to a No. 2 seed and send them to Buffalo, instead of giving them a No. 1 and sending them someplace nicer. Buffalo is my bad-luck city and has been since I was swimming invitational meets there as a high schooler, and that luck held true. Temple was beaten in the second round by Seton Hall, in overtime.
Now, I won't pretend that a girls' basketball game between Haddonfield and Haddon Township is as important as all that, or that the gap between those two teams, talent-wise, is near as big as it was between TU and SJU back then, but that stuff happens all the time when players and coaches know each other so well that there are no shortcuts. Those teams in the Colonial can't outthink each other, and nobody's going to be impressed with anybody's win-loss record because they know each other better. I think it allows the teams to play loose, and that's why crazy stuff tends to happen.
To some extent, most divisions have a little bit of this element working, but the Colonial is on a level. I think it's because, like the Philly Big 5, it's geography-based, with bordering towns involved every night. In the Olympic or the Burlco or CAL or the Trico, you may drive 30-40 minutes to play a division opponent. And some of the Colonial schools aren't so close, but you can live in Haddon Township and WALK to three opponents' home gyms in under 30 minutes. Hop on your bike and you could add a few more (as an aside, I always thought Gloucester and Gloucester Catholic would be great Colonial schools, but that will never happen). Proximity makes a difference, not just because it brings more folks out but because the players have been mixing it up since they were like three years old. And the size of the schools dictates that many of the kids face each other in at least two, and sometimes even three seasons.
As time goes by, I understand my soft spot for the Colonial better and better, because it's almost a nostalgic version of high school sports. The way things used to be everywhere.
Anyway, Tuesday turned into Super Tuesday with the upsets, didn't it? I know that BE was without Lazos, but still, that margin to Pennsauken didn't make that much sense. Then the Indians go and validate that win by spanking Eastern last night and Cherokee takes out Cherry Hill East. Now there are zero undefeated teams left in the Olynpic American, East is 3-1, Washington Township is 2-1, and Pennsauken, Cherokee and Eastern are all 2-2. Call me crazy, but I think 7-3 is going to be enough to win that division, and I'd be more amused than shocked if 6-4 turned the trick.
The other race to destabilize on Tuesday was the ever-riveting Colonial. That group of teams may well not be as strong as they have been in the past -- certainly the late 1990s were a Colonial renaissance that may never occur again -- but the intensity never diminishes. Tom Mulligan, architect of the upset over Haddonfield that threw a spotlight on this chaos, made an apt comparison, I think, when he likened the Colonial to the Philadelphia Big Five in college basketball.
A little story: When I was at Temple, I covered what may have been John Chaney's most talented team, the 1999-2000 squad led by PG Pepe Sanchez, with Quincy Wadley at SG, Mark Karcher at SF, Lamont Barnes at PF, Kevin Lyde at center, and Lynn Greer coming off the bench as the sixth man. This is a team that was slaughtering opponents by 30 and making it look easy, holding them under 40 points most of the time. They went into top-ranked and undefeated Cincinnati, which featured future NBA lottery picks Kenyon Martin and DeMarr Johnson, and kicked the crap out of the Bearcats in February. So the tournament season is coming, the top teams are dropping like flies and it seems like the Owls are a shoe-in for a No. 1 seed as long as they hold serve. Well, the last game of the regular season was against St. Joe's at the Palestra, and the Hawks wouldn't get Jameer until the next season. They were a nice team, led by Marvin O'Connor, but they were an NIT team and Temple had Final Four expectations.
Didn't matter. Temple played as hard as I've seen them play, but there was just no way talent was going to decide that game. St. Joe won in overtime. The Owls went on to win the A-10 tournament, winning the final by like 35, but the NCAA Tournament committee -- much like the NJSIAA seeded process -- didn't believe in the magic of rivalry games. All they saw was St. Joe's middling RPI number, and that was enough to drop Temple to a No. 2 seed and send them to Buffalo, instead of giving them a No. 1 and sending them someplace nicer. Buffalo is my bad-luck city and has been since I was swimming invitational meets there as a high schooler, and that luck held true. Temple was beaten in the second round by Seton Hall, in overtime.
Now, I won't pretend that a girls' basketball game between Haddonfield and Haddon Township is as important as all that, or that the gap between those two teams, talent-wise, is near as big as it was between TU and SJU back then, but that stuff happens all the time when players and coaches know each other so well that there are no shortcuts. Those teams in the Colonial can't outthink each other, and nobody's going to be impressed with anybody's win-loss record because they know each other better. I think it allows the teams to play loose, and that's why crazy stuff tends to happen.
To some extent, most divisions have a little bit of this element working, but the Colonial is on a level. I think it's because, like the Philly Big 5, it's geography-based, with bordering towns involved every night. In the Olympic or the Burlco or CAL or the Trico, you may drive 30-40 minutes to play a division opponent. And some of the Colonial schools aren't so close, but you can live in Haddon Township and WALK to three opponents' home gyms in under 30 minutes. Hop on your bike and you could add a few more (as an aside, I always thought Gloucester and Gloucester Catholic would be great Colonial schools, but that will never happen). Proximity makes a difference, not just because it brings more folks out but because the players have been mixing it up since they were like three years old. And the size of the schools dictates that many of the kids face each other in at least two, and sometimes even three seasons.
As time goes by, I understand my soft spot for the Colonial better and better, because it's almost a nostalgic version of high school sports. The way things used to be everywhere.
posted by SMc. @ 4:10 PM
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